Choose your own adventure! This is a post about running. If don't give two hoots about running, choose "back browser." If you're peeing-your-pants excited to hear about my workout this morning, scroll down.
This morning Alex and I met at the track at 7 and found it locked. Thankfully, she knows and has a GPS watch, so we knew we could do the same workout on the pavement loop in the park. Not exactly ticking off each flat 400, but we would know each mile and our pace. So! We picked up another runner friend who we happened to pass on our warmup, and the three of us did a killer workout:
2 x 2 mile
warm up
2 mile - 13:19 (6:45, 6:34)
2 mile - 13:22 (6:42, 6:40)
warm down
Felt great. I'm pleased. And probably going to be sore tomorrow.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
project365
I watched some friends run a half marathon at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning in snow-turned-rain. Impressive!
This is the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.
Talking the talk and walking the walk. I'm not sure if you can tell, but there is a sign on the truck that says "Two women in a truck" and has flowers in the back of a baby blue truck. Indeed, there are two women in this baby blue truck with flowers in the back. I snapped the photo at a red light.
It's been quite rainy and the worms have been out in full force. Here's one crossing a major traverse on the sidewalk.
A life size rock garden for people to play/relax in. The rake to make soothing patterns is a garden rake.
Um, this is adorable.
Flowers I received in celebration of my graduation from law and graduate school. Capecodchica, J.D., M.A.
This is the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.
Talking the talk and walking the walk. I'm not sure if you can tell, but there is a sign on the truck that says "Two women in a truck" and has flowers in the back of a baby blue truck. Indeed, there are two women in this baby blue truck with flowers in the back. I snapped the photo at a red light.
It's been quite rainy and the worms have been out in full force. Here's one crossing a major traverse on the sidewalk.
A life size rock garden for people to play/relax in. The rake to make soothing patterns is a garden rake.
Um, this is adorable.
Flowers I received in celebration of my graduation from law and graduate school. Capecodchica, J.D., M.A.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Graduation Day
Graduation day doesn't feel so great. It feels like I wish I knew I had passing grades in my classes, like I have a huge amount of debt, like I have no job, like I still can't sleep at night, and like I'm the only single person on earth.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Rememory
Here I sit, one week after I finished my last law school exam. I left it shaking so hard that my fingers dialed "Mo" instead of "Mom." Convinced I failed and just so disappointed that yet again I felt unprepared for the questions I was pressed to answer, I sobbed to my poor mom over the phone. I'm sure she's had many sleepless nights worrying about me these past few years. I've since calmed down a bit, or maybe I just succumbed to helpless apathy. Anything is possible at this school, with these professors (or so it seems), so I know I won't fall asleep easily until I see passing grades posted online.
I've spent the week feeling a new kind of antsy insecurity. What am I supposed to be doing now, now that I've committed to giving myself two weeks off from the job search and I literally have nothing to do. What are all the other people doing on a trail run at 10 a.m. on a Monday? Why is there traffic at approximately 11:30 a.m.? Who are all these people having white wine spritzers with a 2:30 p.m. lunch? After told firmly by a friend, "You're being too hard on yourself. Give yourself a break." I think I am finally starting to unwind. I know it'll take me months to fully unwind. My goal: to have someone tell me (as they used to!) that I'm really laid back. Can you imagine?
Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.
I plan my days around a run. I stop at the grocery store almost every day to get ingredients for a meal I decide to make an hour before I get hungry. I sit in my chair and listen to my favorite news radio show every afternoon at 2 p.m. It took me a good six days before I even wanted - or had the attention span - to read the newspaper. I go for walks listening to my "quiet" mix every evening. I sneak a beer into the park to enjoy while watching the sunset. I watch the whole sunset.
I think it will take me a long time to find myself and to gain back my confidence and energy. I don't just feel burned out, I feel beat up. I feel like I lost myself somewhere in the last there years. I forgot simple things, like that I am not a boring person and I can laugh. Fortunately, human coping mechanisms are amazing. I'll get back to the point where I believe other people when they tell me I am smart. I already find that I've forgotten just how miserable I have felt because my coping mechanisms tend to block out the horrible and only remember the good. In eager anticipation of wakeless nights, I suppress all traumatic rememory and welcome any healing retelling of the story of Who I Am.*
* "Rememory" is a term that Toni Morrison made up in her book, Beloved. It is a kind of psychic haunting in which the specifics of a traumatic incident are told and retold, even as the teller tries to block their full emergence into the conscious mind. Through compulsive repetition, one's narrative is constantly being both torn apart and reconstituted. Memories are constantly being both exhumed and buried, and the mind of the storyteller is both imprisoned and set free in the act of retelling. Rememory is both a reconciliation and a vexation, both a healing and a wounding. Read the book or see more here.
I've spent the week feeling a new kind of antsy insecurity. What am I supposed to be doing now, now that I've committed to giving myself two weeks off from the job search and I literally have nothing to do. What are all the other people doing on a trail run at 10 a.m. on a Monday? Why is there traffic at approximately 11:30 a.m.? Who are all these people having white wine spritzers with a 2:30 p.m. lunch? After told firmly by a friend, "You're being too hard on yourself. Give yourself a break." I think I am finally starting to unwind. I know it'll take me months to fully unwind. My goal: to have someone tell me (as they used to!) that I'm really laid back. Can you imagine?
Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.
I plan my days around a run. I stop at the grocery store almost every day to get ingredients for a meal I decide to make an hour before I get hungry. I sit in my chair and listen to my favorite news radio show every afternoon at 2 p.m. It took me a good six days before I even wanted - or had the attention span - to read the newspaper. I go for walks listening to my "quiet" mix every evening. I sneak a beer into the park to enjoy while watching the sunset. I watch the whole sunset.
I think it will take me a long time to find myself and to gain back my confidence and energy. I don't just feel burned out, I feel beat up. I feel like I lost myself somewhere in the last there years. I forgot simple things, like that I am not a boring person and I can laugh. Fortunately, human coping mechanisms are amazing. I'll get back to the point where I believe other people when they tell me I am smart. I already find that I've forgotten just how miserable I have felt because my coping mechanisms tend to block out the horrible and only remember the good. In eager anticipation of wakeless nights, I suppress all traumatic rememory and welcome any healing retelling of the story of Who I Am.*
* "Rememory" is a term that Toni Morrison made up in her book, Beloved. It is a kind of psychic haunting in which the specifics of a traumatic incident are told and retold, even as the teller tries to block their full emergence into the conscious mind. Through compulsive repetition, one's narrative is constantly being both torn apart and reconstituted. Memories are constantly being both exhumed and buried, and the mind of the storyteller is both imprisoned and set free in the act of retelling. Rememory is both a reconciliation and a vexation, both a healing and a wounding. Read the book or see more here.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Garden of the Gods
This morning I drove down to Colorado Springs (about 1 1/2 hours south of Denver) to do a trail run at Garden of the Gods. When I arrived in CoSp, it was foggy, grey, and 41 degrees. I had been expecting 70s and sunny, as the news told me! I got another cup of coffee and a paper and waited it out until the fog burned off. Then I got my 70s and sunny weather.
Garden of the Gods is a park with red, blue, purple, and white ancient sediments of sandstones, conglomerates and limestone that were deposited horizontally, but now tilt vertically after being faulted by the same forces that caused Pikes Peak mountain. You can see many fossils in the rock: marine forms, plant fossils, and some dinosaur fossils. Some of the strange rock formations are up to several hundred feet long and the tallest is 320 feet high. Check out them rocks:
The trail run I did ended up being 1 hour 20 minutes of running around the park, not including time stopped to snap some photos, read the map, and wait for horseback riders to pass. I had a great time! Running was a really fun way to see the park and to get on some trails that were fantastic and empty. It seemed like most people drove the road loop around the rock formations, getting out of their car at numerous parking lots. These photos are just the scenic trial. Enjoy!
Garden of the Gods is a park with red, blue, purple, and white ancient sediments of sandstones, conglomerates and limestone that were deposited horizontally, but now tilt vertically after being faulted by the same forces that caused Pikes Peak mountain. You can see many fossils in the rock: marine forms, plant fossils, and some dinosaur fossils. Some of the strange rock formations are up to several hundred feet long and the tallest is 320 feet high. Check out them rocks:
The trail run I did ended up being 1 hour 20 minutes of running around the park, not including time stopped to snap some photos, read the map, and wait for horseback riders to pass. I had a great time! Running was a really fun way to see the park and to get on some trails that were fantastic and empty. It seemed like most people drove the road loop around the rock formations, getting out of their car at numerous parking lots. These photos are just the scenic trial. Enjoy!
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